Product Description: Uses primary documents from the annals of Art in Cinema, one of this country's most influential film societies, to reveal a crucial dimension of the history of American independent cinema.

From 1946 until 1954, 'Art in Cinema' presented programs of independent film to large audiences at the San Francisco Museum of Art and at the University of California, Berkeley. Directed by the filmmaker Frank Stauffacher, 'Art in Cinema's' programs were crucial to the emergence of the Bay Area as one of the centers of independent filmmaking. …

With the loss of several admired avant-garde filmmakers in the past few years, “Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film” arrives as a welcome paean to the unfettered, resourceful creativity of its subject. Despite the scope of the title, this friendly, colorful documentary from Pip Chodorov is not the last word on all the shapes, sizes and languages of experimental film, but rather an introduction brightened by a companionable enthusiasm and an apposite sense of community.